His efforts to claim credit for every thing positive that has happened to the town, up to and including the recent sunny weather (I made that one up – just…), are, people admit, at least pleasanter than his colleagues’ attempts to spread fear of a Labour doomsday.

Ben Gummer tries to show his liberal side, but has come down hard in favour of the sanctions regime, and other regressive Tory policies.

Many people are tried of free-market politicians who lay ownership of economic upturns (never downturns), while disclaiming government responsibility for the precarious existence a large number of working people, not to mention benefit claimants, have to live.

I have no insight into the voting intentions of the public.

But if Ipswich is anything to go by, the hard-graft of politicians like David and his colleagues, is beginning to pay off.

* population 133,400 – up to 200, 000 if you include the coterminous villages and small towns.

“the visit by Jeremy Hunt to Ipswich Hospital on Monday was a total farce.

I’d been told I’d have the chance for a good interview about how wonderful the hospital was – and to raise other health issues. In the end the “private” part of the visit over-ran and his special advisor (the dreaded “Spad” immortalised in The Thick of It) insisted that he had no time for a long interview with me.

The television interviews were far more important than the local newspaper – and very enlightening they were too.

Frankly it sounded as if Mr Hunt had swallowed a dictionary containing the phrases “Mid Staffs Hospital,” “Long-term economic plan,” and “Prosperity increases tax receipts” and spewed them up for the viewers’ benefit.

When I tried to ask questions on other subjects, I was told by Ben Gummer I was factually wrong and Mr Hunt was bundled off to the station to allow him to have some other cheesy photographs taken in Clacton.

Mr Gummer later apologised to me for being squeezed out and told me that campaign organisers expect local newspaper reporters to be “19-year-olds who don’t understand the subject.”

Okay, I don’t have it tattooed on my forehead that I know what I’m talking about – but I suggest that any campaign organiser who thinks I’m a 19-year-old really should go to Specsavers!

To be fair, Mr Gummer also stepped in and arranged for me to have an “e-mail interview” with Mr Hunt about the issues I was unable to raise – but it’s not quite the same thing and frankly it’s the way you’re treated on the day that sticks in the mind.”

“the next time the Tories send a bigwig to town, I’ll think twice about whether it’s worth bothering to cover the visit. Or maybe I’ll just turn up in my old cheesecloth shirt and flared jeans – that’s what 19-year-olds wear, isn’t it?”

Andrew. We don’t go to the town centre anymore, largely because of age, but surely, what has happened to it in recent years, is as a result of the Tory led governments policies. We are keeping everything crossed hoping David will win on May 7th, and got our voting virgin, and heavily pregnant Grandaughter to apply for PV for herself and partner, and to put two in for David,even though she is otherwise engaged at the moment.So yes, that makes us Great grandparents as well, making us feel real bloody old

Ipswich has often been very close in the past and is likely to be so again, so votes there have been disproportionately (and of course massively unfairly) important under FPTP. One particularly interesting election was in 1970 when the Tories won by a mere 13 votes – their appeal, over the issue of offshore and commercial radio, to boomers voting for the first time clearly having been enough to swing it (and of course predictive of the long-term separation of the party from “Toryism” in the cultural, Burkean sense).